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NCAA president Mark Emmert planning January summit with Division I schools

Mark Emmert

FILE - This is an Aug. 9, 2011 file photo showing NCAA president Mark Emmert during a news conference in Indianapolis. Emmert says if the allegations against the University of Miami are true, it’s yet another reason to make fundamental changes to college sports. Emmert issued a statement Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2011, after Yahoo! Sports reported a laundry list of allegations by a former Hurricanes booster. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)

AP

While the focus of this website isn’t college football, there’s no denying the fact that the sport’s had a major impact on college basketball. Many of the conference realignment decisions in recent years have been made with football in mind, setting off a domino effect that’s impacted schools at the mid-and low-major levels as well.

With power conferences gearing up to begin their respective football seasons, the commissioners of the five leagues that came out of realignment in the “best” shape giving their thoughts on the current state of the NCAA.

Those presidents have all demanded that changes be made, and with that in mind it was reported by the Indianapolis Star on Thursday that NCAA president Mark Emmert has called for a summit involving Division I schools in January. The NCAA executive committee and Division I board will meet on August 8 to discuss possible models for how to govern the 348 schools that are currently Division I members.

And one thing that’s been noted for years is the fact that these schools don’t operate on similar planes. This impacts the way in which programs are governed, or at least it should be this way. But that hasn’t always been the case, hence the five commissioners’ respective decisions to use the media day platform to address the issue.
“There’s one thing that virtually everybody in Division I has in common right now, and that is they don’t like the governance model,” Emmert said. “Now, there’s not agreement on what the new model should be. But there’s very little support for continuing things in the governing process the way they are today.”

With the increased demands that the current model be augmented, there’s been some chatter that the power conferences could look to either split away from the NCAA or establish another division under the NCAA umbrella. But according to Emmert a split has not be discussed seriously, and member schools are willing to work together to find a solution of some sort.

In the letter, Emmert called the “first-time Division I Governance Dialogue” a “critical meeting” that will cover “virtually every aspect of how Division I operates.”

“There’s a need to recognize there are Division I schools with $5 million athletic budgets and $155 million athletic budgets, and trying to find a model that fits all of them is the enormous challenge right now,” Emmert said.


At this point it’s difficult to come to a definitive conclusion in regards to what changes will be made, but it isn’t difficult to realize that changes need to be made. Will this ultimately lead to the dissolution of Division I as we know it, or will it simply mean that the current membership makes the moves needed to keep everyone happy without leaving the NCAA umbrella?

Come January we may be closer to receiving an answer to that question.